In
1893, President Grover Cleveland and Congressman William Wilson of West
Virginia, both Democrats, drafted a bill to lower tariff rates.
After the House passed a slightly revised version, Senator Arthur Pue
Gorman of Maryland, a Democrat, and other senators radically altered it
into a high-tariff bill. This cartoon depicts the passage of the
Wilson-Gorman Tariff in August 1894 as a stunning victory for Senator
Gorman, and a degrading defeat for President Cleveland. Gorman is
a conquering Roman Caesar who ruthlessly drives the Democratic
high-tariff chariot of the "Sugar Trust" over Wilson and his
low-tariff bill. Cleveland appears as a vanquished warrior,
captured and enslaved in the tariff war, whose enchained figure is
forced to bow and follow Gorman's lead.

Debate over
tariff policy
had existed since the early days of the American republic, but reached a
peak in the late-nineteenth century as the United States became
increasingly industrialized. In
the 1880s, Republicans began to emerge as the party of trade
protectionism, while Democrats become more clearly identified with lower
tariffs. Still, as the episode of the Wilson-Gorman Tariff
attested, there were differences of opinion in both parties on the
issue, especially the Democratic Party. In the 1880s, President
Chester Arthur, a Republican, and his Democratic successor, President
Grover Cleveland, unsuccessfully
tried to reform and reduce the high and complex tariff rates. In
1890, Congressman William McKinley, a Republican from Ohio, sponsored
the McKinley Tariff Act, which raised the average tariff rate to 48%,
the highest peacetime rate in American history to that date.

The
harmony expressed at the 1892 Democratic National Convention on tariff
reform and other issues was a mirage, but helped the party win control
of both houses of Congress and send Cleveland back to the White House
for a second (non-consecutive) term. President Cleveland believed
that high protective tariffs unfairly aided some industries at the cost
of others, raised prices for consumers (who were then struggling with an
economic depression), and hampered the national economy. Unlike
his first term, when he had sent a powerful message to Congress calling
for tariff reform and then removed himself from the legislative process,
Cleveland took a more active role in the winter of
1893-1894.

Cleveland
worked with Congressman Wilson, chairman of the Ways and Means
Committee, to draft a tariff reform bill, which Wilson introduced into
the House on December 19, 1893. The president stayed in close
contact with Wilson as the bill made its way through the House, and
threatened to use his patronage power against Democratic congressmen who
opposed the measure. Wilson would have preferred deeper cuts, and
the chairman had to make some concessions to his colleagues, but the
final bill was close to Cleveland's goal of modest reform, reducing the
overall tariff rate by about 15% and expanding the duty-free list for
raw materials. On February 1, 1894, the Wilson Tariff passed the
House, 204-140, and was sent to the Senate.

The Democrats' slim majority in
the Senate necessitated strict party solidarity if the measure was to
pass. At a Democratic Party caucus, chaired by Senator Gorman in
late February 1894, bitter criticism of the Wilson Bill revealed it had
little chance of success. In early March, Senators James Jones of
Arkansas and George Vest of Missouri personally solicited amendments to
the bill from all their aggrieved colleagues. By the time the bill
was reported from the Finance Committee to the full Senate on March 20,
it had been substantially changed by shrinking the free list and
actually raising rates on a laundry list of products.

Floor debate brought more
dissatisfaction and confusion, prompting Gorman to convene another party
caucus on May 3. He and Jones presented a third version, removing
most raw materials (such as sugar) from the free list and raising rates
on over 100 items. When the final vote was taken in the Senate,
over 600 amendments had been added to the original House bill.
Only wool and copper remained on the free list, import duties were
placed on both raw and refined sugar, rates for numerous items were added or raised,
and the overall rate of 42% was only a 6% reduction from the McKinley
Tariff. On July 3, the Wilson-Gorman Bill (as it was then called)
passed the Senate, 39-34, with 12 senators abstaining.

Cleveland and Wilson hoped to reinvest the
legislation with real reform at the joint conference that commenced in
July to resolve differences in the House and Senate versions. Gorman
and the Democratic senators, however, refused to budge, insisting that
the House accept the Wilson-Gorman Bill as the Senate had passed
it. The president had essentially stayed out of the fray while the
Wilson Bill was being dramatically transformed by the Senate, and the
Democratic senators had been undaunted by his previous threats to the
House. With the conference deadlocked, Cleveland had Wilson read a
letter on the floor of the House in which the president urged Democrats
to stand fast for the principle of tariff reform, labeling opposition as
"party perfidy and party dishonor." Cleveland's
ill-timed intervention with heated rhetoric only angered Gorman and
Senate Democrats, who dug in their heels.

Despite the best efforts of
Wilson, House Democrats voted to accept the Senate version of the bill,
passing the Wilson-Gorman Tariff 182-105 on August 13. A
disheartened Cleveland refused to sign the bill, but did not veto the
measure, which, as bad as it was, he considered better than the McKinley
Tariff it replaced.